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Page 53
The real Ettrick Shepherd was better than the _Noctes_ can make him.
Lockhart gives a delightful account of his first visit to Walter Scott
in Castle Street--his first visit, mind you. He is shown into the
drawing-room and finds Mrs. Scott, disposed, _� la_ Madame Recamier,
on a sofa. His acuteness comes to the aid of his bewilderment, and he
is quick to extend himself in similar fashion upon the opposite sofa.
In the dining-room he was much more at his ease. Before the end of the
meal he had his host as "Wattie" and his hostess as "Charlotte." Next
day he wrote to Scott to ask what he might have said, and to offer
apologies if needful.
A remark put into his mouth by North, that he could "ban" Burns for
having forestalled him with the line--
The summer to Nature, my Willie to me!
set me wondering wherein consists the true lyrical magic. In that line
of Burns's, clearly, it lies in the harmony of lyric thought and lyric
lilt. In--
Come away, come away, Death,
it is in the lilt alone. One thing only about it is sure, and that is
that the diction must be conversational. There will be tears in the
voice, but the voice must be that of the homely earth, never of the
stage, never of the pulpit If you agree with that, you will have to
cut out practically all the poets from Dryden to Cowper, Gray and
Collins among them; for Gray has a learned sock, and hardly allows
familiarity when he is elegising Horace Walpole's cat. But Shakespeare
proves it, Ben Jonson proves it, and all the good poets from
Wordsworth. Burns had the vernacular to help him, and for the most
part a model to steer by. All Lowland Scots, lads and lassies, wail,
and occasionally howl, in his songs. The first two lines of that one
envied by Hogg run:
Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie,
Here awa, there awa, haud awa hame!
and of these the second is traditional, altered only in one word.
Burns writes "haud awa hame" instead of repeating "here awa"--and
improves it. Shakespeare used the King's English, but never shirked a
racy idiom. Here is a good instance from the Sonnets, and from one of
the greatest of them, "Farewell, thou art too dear."
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter--
In sleep a king; but waking _no such matter_.
You might call that a slang phrase and be right.
There are other cases, and many; some where he goes all lengths, and
one at least where he goes beyond them. But to leave Shakespeare, for
a perfect example of passion married to common speech, commend me to--
Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
But I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart
That thus so clearly I myself can free.
Intense feeling, intense music, a lovely thing: a poem.
SKELETONS AT A FEAST
The other day the village was celebrating the birthday of its
Labourers' Union in a manner which used to be reserved for the coming
of age of the Squire's son, or for the Harvest Festival, in which the
farmer might give thanks for the harvest, and the peasant, perhaps,
for having been allowed to assist in winning it. I take a sort of
pride in recording a staidness in the observance which I believe to be
peculiar to the countryside in which I live. There was a service,
with a sermon, in church, all persuasions uniting; then a dinner with
speeches; then sports and dancing on the grass. Every stave of the
Pastoral was announced and punctuated by the village band. "God save
the King" closed all down at nine o'clock.
It was sober merry-making after our manner, yet one could feel the
undercurrent of a triumph not difficult to understand. Not a man there
but knew, or had heard his father tell, of how things used to be. Ten
years ago those men were earning sixteen shillings a week for twelve
hours a day; fifteen years ago they were earning twelve shillings;
thirty years ago they were earning nine shillings; a hundred years
ago they were on the rates, herded about in conscript gangs under the
hectorings of an overseer. Now--and it has seemed to come all in a
moment--the humblest of them earn their 36_s._ 6_d._; the head men
their 40_s._; their hours are down to fifty for the week, with a
half-holiday on Saturday; delegates of their kind sit at a board in
Trowbridge face to face and of equal worth with delegates of their
employers. All matters affecting their status, housing, terms of
employment can be brought before the board; and beside that, and
behind it, like a buttress, there is a Union, whose name recalls that
other grim fortress to which alone in times bygone they had to look
when old age was upon them. This new Union has been in existence here
little more than a twelvemonth, but they know now that it has spread
all over England.
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